“Just hang there and try to relax,” he says. “Talk to me. Talking keeps your mind off what you’re doing.”
“Talk about what?”
“How about the obvious … Heard from your dad lately?”
“Uh, no. We don’t talk on the regular, though. I was sort of waiting until I had something to tell him before I called him.… You know, like the internship. Only I’m still too chicken to write my contact. I composed the email, but I haven’t sent it yet, because of the naked photo of my mother circulating around town and whatnot.”
“I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“Oh, really? I don’t see a naked photo of your dad floating around town, so how would you know what it feels like?”
“Hey. My dad struts down our hallway from the shower to my parents’ bedroom every day without a stitch on, because ‘it’s only a body, Lucky, and we all have them,’?” he says, imitating his father. “Trust me, if that hairy body floated around town, itmight trigger an actual apocalypse. Buildings would collapse. The portal to hell would open up and swallow the entire town.”
“Shut up,” I say, laughing. “I can’t balance!”
“You’re doing great. Keep it up,” he says. “Okay, what else? How about … tell me everywhere you’ve lived.”
“Oh, good God.”
“Come on,” he says in a teasing voice.
“Too many places to name. Everywhere in New England, pretty much. Easier to tell you where I haven’t.”
“Okay, what was the most favorite place you lived?”
My hands are starting to cramp on the deck. I stretch them out one at time. “Vermont. It snowed so much in the winter, and there was nothing to do, so mom and I would play board games all night. We lived in this kooky apartment that had chalkboard paint on everything—like, the previous tenant went overboard, you know? And we kept a tally of all our games on a cabinet that was painted like a chalkboard, who was winning which games. Only, she would sneak into the living room and erase my wins, and I had to catch her cheating.…” I laugh and nearly choke in the water. “You had to be there, I guess. It was just a fun winter.”
“Your mom was always fun.”
“She can be.”
“Can I ask you something about her? If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. Don’t get mad.”
“Kinda have me in a precarious position here,” I tell him.
He laughs, holding on to the boat deck beside me, and thengoes serious. “Does your mom really date … a lot of people?”
“Is my mom the giant slut that everyone says she is?”
“Whoa. I didn’t say that. I’m not the morality police. No judgment.”
“It’s fine,” I say, a little weary in both my arms and my mind. “Honestly? I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. She says she’s not interested in relationships, and she just likes men. But I don’t even know if that’s true, because she’s never happy about it.”
Last year, when Mom was managing a bookstore up the coast, one of her assistant managers, a woman in her late twenties, had a similar dating philosophy: new guys every weekend. Marianne was loud and proud about it, and all her online dates met her for the first time at the store, were introduced to all the booksellers on shift, and they gave the thumbs up or down—it was all boisterous and funny, and even though I felt sorry for the men she dumped, at least Marianne was honest about it. At least I believed her when she said that’s what she wanted.
But, see, I don’t think it’s what Mom wants. She’s nothappy. Sometimes I think there are other reasons why she’s only interested in random encounters—she’s escaping something, hiding something. I tell Lucky, “It almost feels like … I don’t know. An addiction? A gambling problem? Something she does to stop feeling depressed? I don’t even know.”
“Is she depressed?”
“I don’tthinkso? She doesn’t act like it. She’s just a very private person, weirdly enough. I think everyone in my family is. Like,that’s just the Saint-Martin way. We all keep a part of ourselves locked up. She’s kind of hinted that my grandma was the same way, and I guess I do the same thing to her, because I haven’t told her about my plans to go to Los Angeles.”
“Yeah,” he says, sounding a little forlorn.
“Anyway, it’s none of my business, I guess. I just want her to be okay, you know?”
And that’s true, I realize. Even if I don’t want to keep moving around the country with her, being dragged from town to town, it doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I want her to be okay. I want her to be happy. It makes me feel bad that I can’t help her.
That I’m not enough for her.
